Foreign tourists sightseeing in HCM City's downtown area on cyclos. — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — The General Statistics Office (GSO) reported that 707,000 foreign visitors arrived in Việt Nam in December 2022, an increase of 18.5 per cent compared to last month and up 41.2 per cent compared to last year.

So far this year, Việt Nam has welcomed more than 3.36 million foreign visitors, 23.3 times higher than last year, but this figure represents a decrease of 79.9 per cent compared to the 18 million international tourists that the country welcomed in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic happened.

The number falls short of the goal of welcoming five million foreign visitors in 2022.

About 2.6 million tourists of the total were from Asia, 508,400 from Europe, 388,900 from the Americas, 156,600 from Oceania, and 11,500 from Africa, according to statistics authorities.

The number of foreign tourists coming to Việt Nam by air accounted for 89.5 per cent of the total while 10.4 per cent came by road, and 0.1 per cent by sea.

In 2022, Việt Nam’s tourism gradually recovered, mostly on the back of domestic tourism. The number of domestic tourists is estimated to have reached over 101 million. Total revenue from tourism is estimated at VNĐ495 trillion (nearly US$21 billion), 23 per cent higher than planned and 66 per cent higher than that of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some localities had high tourism revenue in 2022 compared to the previous year, including Cần Thơ (10.3 times higher), Bình Định (9.3), Khánh Hòa (8.2), Thừa Thiên – Huế (8), Đà Nẵng (6.7), Hà Nội (4.1), Hải Phòng (3.8), and HCM City City (1.9).

Việt Nam’s tourism sector targets to serve about eight million foreign visitors from a total of 110 million next year, according to the General Administration of Việt Nam Tourism.

The country expects to earn about VNĐ650 trillion ($27.5 billion) in revenue from tourism.

Also next year, Việt Nam will launch its tourism network planning from 2021 to 2030 with a vision to 2045.

The sector will implement the Việt Nam Tourism Marketing Strategy to 2030, the project "Application of Industry 4.0 technology to develop smart tourism, turn tourism into a spearhead economic sector", and a project on developing community-based tourism.

The administration is planning to organise the National Conference on Tourism in the first quarter of 2023, a conference to review the five-year implementation of the Politburo's Resolution No. 08-NQ/TW on developing tourism into a spearhead economic sector, and a conference on training human resources for tourism.

Tourism authorities will participate in international events such as the ASEAN Tourism Forum ATF 2023 in Indonesia, the ITB travel fair in Germany’s Berlin, and the World Travel Market in London. They will also launch communication campaigns on CNN and some major international media channels. — VNS